The OBX-Wind week was fantastic, and there were hundreds of pictures posted on Facebook. But an email from a friend just reminded me that not everyone is on Facebook, so I'll post a few pictures here, along with links to more pictures and the full results. Results first:
Men's Open
- Kurosh Kiani
- Dan Preece
- Arnold Roest
Men's 6.5
- Gaetan Lauzon
- Michael Wazewski
- Ron McKay
Women's Open
- Nina Schweikardt
- Leanne Torrie
- Andrea Dietrich
Women's 6.0
- Carole Ausant
- Martine Monett
- Annabel Ferguson
More than 100 racers were registered, and about 95 racers finished at least one race. According to the GPS tracks, a race was 16 km long! Full results are on OBX-Wind.com.
We also had a little GPS speedsurfing competition going on on ka72.com. Here are the final results:
The competition was pretty intense, as evidenced by 4 winners in the 5 different categories - Roo, Dean, Al, and Nina. Dean took the overall leadership despite still being in pain from trying to ski through some trees a few weeks earlier. In my eyes, another big winner was Dani, who got back onto the water after overcoming some troublesome health issues.
Nina outclassed everyone in the distance category by sailing 223.13 km (a bit more than 5 marathons) - on the day of the long distance race! She had sailed about 80 km before the racing started. She was quite happy to have the races in the middle, since she finds going back and forth a bit boring. But she was rather unhappy that the wind died at around 6:30 pm. She came in when here 7.0 m race sail was not big enough anymore to get her planing - just 3 km shy of the women's world record spot on the GPS Team challenge.
Since Nina had beaten my top speeds several days in a row before, I tried hard to beat her in distance - but luck was not on my side. I sailed about 100 km before the race started at 10:30 am, and maybe I was getting a bit tired as I came in for the jibe at the second mark. Two pictures tell the story:
I'm on the blue and white Gaastra sail on the right side. I was in to top 20% or so for the race, which I was happy enough with. And then ...
I made a big splash. That is a questionable tactic in any race. Usually, long distance races are a bit more forgiving - you got plenty of time to make up distance. But unfortunately, I had once again practiced my Karate skills on the sail, which did not like my elbow. Not one little bit - the tear was huge, and forced me to drop out of the race and take an early lunch break.
The afternoon was not much better. After thinking that perhaps distraction from other racers had contributed to my morning fall, I had decided to not join the second race, and sailed about 1/2 mile downwind of everyone else. When the race was over and the water was getting less crowded, I decided to sail back upwind ... and immediately had a violent spinout. Violent enough to break a footstrap screw. I had lost the fin! That was the same fin that I had run aground with at full speed a few months earlier. The top did not have a brass nut, but the screw still seemed to fit well enough. I had used the fin for several sessions after building it back up with Marine-Tex and sanding it. But sailing 140 km in a session apparently was too much, and the screw had worked itself loose. I walked back a bit, trying to find the fin in chest-deep water, and checking for any obstacles in the water that I might have hit, but found neither. I was quite far out, almost at the reef. I tried to sail with the harness tied around the back of the board, which was possible, but very tedious on my 96 l board. So I took the opportunity to check the water depth by walking most of the way to shore. Yes, it's shallow enough - hip-to-chest deep most of the way for a 6 ft guy. By the time I got to shore more than 2 hours later, I was tired and rather cold. Here are the GPS tracks:
A few more pictures from the race and the week:
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| Open winner and PWA pro Kurash Kinai showing how to jibe |
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| Party at Ocean Air |
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| Speed clinic with Roo |
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| JR, Nina, Mike, Chrissy |
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| Organizer and 4th place racer JR |
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| Phil showing that freestyle gear can be fast |
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| JR, Kurash, Mike and Chrissy |
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| Al, Bart, Nina, Dean, Peter, Mike |
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| Winning with style |
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| Dani's birthday party |
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| Nina freestyling |
Plenty more pictures here and here, and also on Facebook - check Windsurfer Photos and OBX-Wind. Many thanks to the organizers (especially Mike, JR, and Chrissy), helpers, local stores, sponsors, and the East Coast Windsurfing Association. Also thanks to Dylan from ka72.com for setting up the speedsurfing competition!
